


Verpflictung

by strixus



Series: Wes Brot Ich Ess, Des Lied Ich Sing [2]
Category: Metalocalypse
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-03
Updated: 2010-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-05 17:18:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/44105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strixus/pseuds/strixus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode 2, Season 3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Verpflictung

**Author's Note:**

> This is the next bit after Angebunden, the part I was holding off on writing until I saw Ep 2. I owe a part of this to our discussion over on CLDK during the episode. You'll see it as you read.

Charles didn't sleep the rest of that night. He probably wouldn't have been able to even if he had not been holding a series of ice packs against the side of his head, trying desperately to reduce the swelling around the lower part of his eye and jaw. Thoughts tumbled over one another inside his mind as he sat on the end of his bed, pressing the icepack against tender flesh. _What just happened?_

He was used to Nathan's temper, and thought of it in much the same way as he did the weather. It was unpredictable, randomly alternating between calm and violence, and generally, if you waited long enough, whatever storm was brewing would blow over, lost in the man's own mercurial nature. Charles had seen Nathan angry, as well as sulking, pouting, raging, riled, and throwing a good old fashioned temper tantrum. You could fill an entry in a thesaurus with all the words Charles knew just to describe Nathan's various types of anger. But that one - the one that brought stone to the broad features and fire to the green eyes - was the most rare and dangerous of the many hues of anger.

It wasn't that the mood made Nathan any more dangerous, physically at least. Nathan wasn't often careful about his own strength, and there were enough people either permanently disabled or dead from Nathan's lighter moods to label that one as a more deadly mood. But it was something more dangerous, in its own way, than anything the other boys could produce on their own, even in the worst moods. It was, and Charles hated to admit it, one of the few things that scared him.

Charles shivered, goose flesh rising on his arms and back as he sat in the dim light of his bedroom lamp, and decided that whatever good the icepack was going to do, it had done hours ago. He looked up into his bedroom mirror and into his own reflection from across the room. He decided then that he needed to do everything he could to bring the boys' lives back to normal for them. Maybe, if he could do that, what was coming wouldn't be nearly as hard on them.

Maybe then he could stop this gnawing guilt that was trying to settle into his heart.

* * *

Time passed faster than he was aware of. There were too many things to do, too many things that had to be taken care of. The boys, however, had seemed to fall right back into their old lives. If anything, they managed to be more disruptive and spend even more money than they had before their near strangling by the record label. But that was acceptable, even if he did have to remind them, repeatedly, to try to be careful in public with how they acted. He was starting to run out of places to dump the uncooperative participants in some of William's largest offenses against their fans, but even that was simply another challenge of the job, after all.

It kept the expense accounts interesting, if a bit long. He was doing his weekly review of the numbers, double checking the reports from the accountants just to be sure. It was a familiar event, something which kept the passage of time for him. He was a man of habit, even if those habits were a simple as checking the reports on a regular basis. _And_, he thought to himself,_ there are more than enough irregularities in a place like this without my having been gone for nine months._

A stab of twisting guilt struck him in the side, feeling for all the world like an arrow shaft. He winced, and tried to focus his thoughts on something else. Ah, yes, the reports from the latest Thunderhorse show, those would do. He opened the folder and began to read the reports, scratching idly at a spot on the side of his face that was just a slightly different shade than the rest of his skin.

Another challenge of the job was, of course, simply keeping tabs on the boys. He had been aware of Toki's - for want of a better word - dalliances with Thunderhorse since they had started. As such, he hadn't immediately sent the goons after the band as he would have any other unapproved tribute band that was becoming popular. With the change in policy, he hadn't really needed to keep doing that anyway, but it never hurt to enforce your copyrights with an iron fist. But, he had let Toki keep his fun: heavens knew the boy didn't get enough of that often.

That the boys had wanted to take over the tribute band and become their own tribute band had amused him. Of course, he did what he had always done when one of the boys got a wild hare and wandered off: he sent the plainclothes Gears after them, to follow at a distance. A very close distance. They would get hungry, or bored, soon enough, and come home.

He stared at the row of numbers on the expense account sheet in front of his eyes, realizing that he had been looking at it for nearly twenty minutes without really seeing it. They would, he repeated to himself, come home. He took off his glasses, setting them aside on the blotter of his desk, and rubbed his eyes, feeling suddenly tired.

_They would come home. Of course they would._

* * *

When the promise of food hadn't been enough to tempt them, Charles had been worried. No, he had been outright terrified, but he had walked away, hoping that he had simply read Nathan's face wrong. Yes, there had been hunger, and exhaustion, and that streak of stubbornness a mile wide that showed itself daily. But those green eyes had looked at him over the top of a speaker and blazed anger and defiance from a face that was stone still. That was more than Nathan's stubbornness there, more than his way of saying that his fun wasn't over yet. This was something more.

In his unsettled state, he might have been too hard on them, he realized. But he hadn't really known what to say in the face of those eyes. The others might have come home, then, had it not been for Nathan, but when Nathan lead, the rest usually followed, no matter how foolish the idea. But this wasn't just foolish, this wasn't just being suborn.

It was something to do with that night, now weeks gone, and Charles still couldn't figure it out. And that scared him even more than the expression on the lead singer's face as he had been told, firmly, to go away. The others might not know, or they might, but there was something more to this Thunderhorse fiasco than just needing to get back to their roots. Charles could only walk away and get into the car, trying to hide the fear and worry from his face until safely behind dark glass and armor plating.

Only thirty minutes had passed until Nathan had called, but those thirty minutes had been some of the worst of Charles' life._ I left them alone for nine months_, he thought,_ I let them think I was dead and for what? How badly have I managed to destroy what little connection I had with them? With Nathan?_ Guilt and fear seethed inside his mind, and for the first time since his return, he felt that rising sense of powerlessness that had been his constant companion for those nine months away. _I tried my damnedest to protect you, and still, I failed. And you're never going to forgive me for that, are you, Nathan?_

Yet then the call had come, and relief had surged through him. He had made all haste to pick up the boys, though the bribes to the FAA would be enough to make at least two of their accountants die of heart failure when they saw them, and made haste to get airborne as soon as possible.

Toki, Skwisgaar and Pickles had made all haste to the food waiting for them, vanishing without so much as a glance in Charles' direction. Things with them, he saw, were quite back to normal. But Nathan stood, watching Charles watch the others, his face still stony, even with fatigue and hunger writ so large on the singer's features. He walked up to Charles, well within the normal radius of personal space, and reached up suddenly. Charles couldn't help himself, and flinched. He felt thick, cold fingers touch the side of his head roughly, scrubbing away the layer of makeup and then pulling free the thin coating of latex and spirit gum that hid the worst of the scar on the side of his face.

"No." Nathan's voice was a growl, deeper than even his singing voice. "You." Nathan wadded what had been carefully applied every morning since the night in Charles' bedroom in a single, large fist, and then dropped it onto the metal floor in front of Charles' shoes. "You don't get to pretend it didn't happen."

The sound of booted feet on metal floor echoed in time with the pounding of his heart as Nathan stalked away.

**Author's Note:**

> Verpflictung – Obligations or commitments or debt, in the sense of both moral obligation, and in the sense of indebtedness, particularly in owing a debt in response to the action of another. Sometimes translated as "to have a duty" It also has a component of being forcibly put under this obligation by those actions, and is sometimes translated as "to bind".


End file.
